t did not come home to him with clear, accurate
conviction--his brain was not a first-rate medium for illumination; but
the facts struck him now with a blind sort of force; and he accepted the
blank sensation of failure. Also, he read in the faces of those round
him an alien spirit, a chasm of black misunderstanding which his
knowledge of Arabic could never bridge over.

Here he was, shut up with Gippies who had no real faith in him, in the
house of a Sheikh whose servants would cut his throat on no provocation
at all; and not an eighth of a mile away was a horde of Arabs--a circle
of death through which it was impossible to break with the men in his
command. They must all die here, if they were not relieved.

The nearest garrison was at Kerbat, sixty miles away, where five hundred
men were stationed. Now that his cup of mistakes was full, Wyndham
bimbashi would willingly have made the attempt to carry word to the
garrison there. But he had no right to leave his post. He called for
a volunteer. No man responded. Panic was upon the Gippies. Though
Wyndham's heart sickened within him, his lips did not frame a word of
reproach; but a blush of shame came into his face, and crept up to his
eyes, dimming them. For there flashed through his mind what men at home
would think of him when this thing, such an end to his whole career, was
known. As he stood still, upright and confounded, some one touched his
arm.

It was Hassan, his Soudanese servant. Hassan was the one person in Egypt
who thoroughly believed in him. Wyndham was as a god to Hassan, though
this same god had given him a taste of a belt more than once. Hassan
had not resented the belt, though once, in a moment of affectionate
confidence, he had said to Wyndham that when his master got old and died
he would be the servant of an American or a missionary, "which no whack
Mahommed."

It was Hassan who now volunteered to carry word to the garrison at
Kerbat.

"If I no carry, you whack me with belt, Saadat," said Hassan, whose
logic and reason were like his master's, neither better nor worse.

"If you do, you shall have fifty pounds--and the missionary," answered
Wyndham, his eyes still cloudy and his voice thick; for it touched him
in a tender nerve that this one Soudanese boy should believe in him and
do for him what he would give much to do for the men under him. For his
own life he did not care--his confusion and shame were so great.

He watched Hassan steal out